{"id":2635,"date":"2025-12-03T12:38:42","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T11:38:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/figuremergenti.it\/senza-categoria\/chapter-9-sexual-orientations-and-identity\/"},"modified":"2026-03-16T11:07:02","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T10:07:02","slug":"chapter-9-sexual-orientations-and-identity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/figuremergenti.it\/en\/pubblications\/chapter-9-sexual-orientations-and-identity\/","title":{"rendered":"Chapter 9: Sexual Orientations and Identity"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"wpb-content-wrapper\"><p>[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text css=&#8221;&#8221;]The chapter situates sexual orientation within a broad, relational field, arguing that desire organizes relational life and self-formation while unfolding inside sociocultural norms. It distinguishes sexual identity, gender identity, and orientation; maps major orientations and nonbinary gender identifications; and shows how heteronormativity renders majority experience invisible while demanding self-definition from minorities. A historical overview traces the depathologization of homosexuality and critiques the persistence of \u201cconversion\u201d practices. The text reframes homophobia as a wider homonegativity\u2014cultural, institutional, and internalized\u2014linked to minority stress and to the developmental challenges faced by lesbian, gay, and bisexual people, especially in adolescence.<\/p>\n<p>Using a Gestalt lens, the chapter describes the \u201csexual self\u201d as an emergent, field phenomenon: contact intentionality moves toward encounter, but introjects and stigma can interrupt cycles of experience, prompting concealment, false identities, or meandering paths to belonging. Coming out is read as a performative, relational practice of visibility that supports empowerment and collective imaginaries, yet entails ongoing situational choices. Clinically, it advocates an affirmative Gestalt approach: recognize homosexuality as a healthy variant, decenter heteronormative assumptions in language and setting, and provide a fertile, inclusive ground where figures of desire can emerge. Therapy becomes a protected space to metabolize shame and loss, reclaim imagination, integrate personal and social dimensions, and support responsibility and creativity in living one\u2019s orientation\u2014individually and within communities.[\/vc_column_text][vc_btn title=&#8221;Download Chapter 9&#8243; css=&#8221;&#8221; link=&#8221;url:https%3A%2F%2Ffiguremergenti.it%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2025%2F12%2FChapter-9.pdf|target:_blank&#8221;][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The chapter situates sexual orientation within a broad, relational field, arguing that desire organizes relational life and self-formation while unfolding inside sociocultural norms.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2636,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[58],"class_list":["post-2635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pubblications","tag-gestalt-sexology"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - 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